A representative from Sony said during an interview that Blu-ray may easily be the last and final optical disc format. Sony did not admit that physical media for content will be gone in a decade or even less from now, quite opposite, the firm believes that further incarnations of Blu-ray will allow the technology to live quite a long life.

“Blu-Ray is the final format for the optical disc. We don’t have a shorter laser. In the future, if we have a physical media format, it will change physically. It won’t look like an optical disc. I don’t know what sort of technology we will have in the future,” he said, “but while using lasers and optical discs, this is the final format,” said Taka Miyama, Sony’s product strategy manager for home video marketing in Europe, reports Electricpig web-site.

Currently Blu-ray disc offers more than enough capacity for modern movies: up to 50GB of information on a single optical disc allows studios to record both high-definition movie in 1920x1080 resolution as well as additional content on a single medium. But consumers and content creators may want to add something new even to Blu-ray: more interactive features or even stereoscopic 3D, which will require more storage space. Moreover, some companies already experiment with so-called Super Hi-Vision video technology, which enables up to 7680x4320 resolution and requires a lot of storage space due to extremely high bit-rate: 180Mb/s – 600Mb/s (22.5MB/s – 75MB/s), up from 40Mb/s on Blu-ray.

Currently Sony is optimistic about Blu-ray since companies like Pioneer and TDK are working hard to enable higher capacities on the standard, which is likely to guarantee long life for the format.

“I’ve seen prototypes for 400GB discs,” he said. “That’s approaching half a terabyte. If you went to 4K (twice the resolution of full HD), Blu-Ray is still big enough for a full movie. If it’s enough, then there’s no need to do any more development,” said Sony’s chief technical advisor for home audio and video, Eric Kingdon.

There is a dilemma for Sony and Blu-ray disc association, the organization that oversees further development of the standard: on the one hand, both need to ensure that the currently available Blu-ray incarnation will have a long life and consumers will not be forced to upgrade their players or content, on the other hand, the Blu-ray disc promoters need to stay one step ahead of services that rent or sell high-definition videos via the Internet, which also means constant improving of quality and consequently the standard.

...the Blu-ray disc promoters need to stay one step ahead of services that rent or sell high-definition videos via the Internet, which also means constant improving of quality and consequently the standard.

The other way to compete is on cost. Discs will never be as inexpensive as downloads, but narrowing the gap significantly will insure future demand for a physical disc.